The Pueblo Sin Fronteras (“People Without Borders”) is a project of La Familia Latina Unida, a Chicago, Illinois-based 501(c)(4) illegal immigration advocacy organization formed in 2001 by Elvira Arellano, an activist for immigrants living illegally in the United States. The organization is affiliated with the Chicago-based 501(c)(3) pro-illegal immigration group Centro Sin Fronteras. Together, the organizations have been involved in organizing approximately 1,000 economic migrants from Central America to attempt to cross the U.S. and Mexican borders illegally since 2010.[1]

While it’s unclear who founded Pueblo Sin Fronteras, many media sources attribute the group’s creation to Roberto Corona, an illegal immigration activist who formed Pueblo Sin Fronteras in 2009 while organizing day laborers near Southern Methodist University in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas. [2]

Organizational Overview

Pueblo Sin Fronteras and La Familia Latina Unida, its sponsor, are regularly listed together, including on the latter’s website and their respective social media pages.[3]

Emma Lozano, a left-wing activist and pastor at the Lincoln United Methodist Church in Chicago, Illinois, is listed as executive director of Pueblo Sin Fronteras. [4] Lozano is also president and founder of the Centro Sin Fronteras.[5] She is the sister of the late Rudy Lozano, a left-wing activist and community organizer in Chicago, Illinois.[6] Lozano is also a pastor at the Lincoln United Methodist Church in Chicago, along with her husband, the pastor Walter “Slim” Coleman. [7][8]

Ideological Origins

The Centro Sin Fronteras was founded in Chicago, Illinois in 1987 by Emma Lozano, a pastor at the Lincoln United Methodist Church. [12]

Prior to founding Centro, Lozano was reportedly active in a left-wing organization in Chicago called Centro de Accion Social Autonomo (“Center for Autonomous Social Action,” or CASA). CASA has been described as “the self-proclaimed vanguard of an ethnic Mexican class-based revolution” following a Marxist-Leninist ideology. “CASA believed in a world without borders and, in addition to immigrant services and study groups, was also committed to trade union work.”[13]

According to Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia, “The Centro has an international mission, addressing U.S. policies in Central America and supporting movements for social justice in Mexico. It also provides exchanges with communities in Santo Domingo, El Salvado, Cuba, and Mexico. Lozano led a delegation to Vieques, Puerto Rico, to stop weapons testing in the area.”[14]

In 2006, Centro Sin Fronteras supported the “Child Citizen Protection Act” introduced by Rep. José E. Serrano in the hopes that the effort would “result in the legalization of undocumented immigrants who are parents and have previous deportations, even if future legalization measures exclude people with prior deportations.”[15]

October-November 2018 Illegal Migrant Caravan

Background

In mid-October 2018, a caravan of roughly 4,000 to 7,000 immigrants seeking illegal entry into the United States was launched from Central America. The caravan, which first crossed the Guatemalan border into Mexico illegally on October 19, was organized by at least one activist from Pueblo Sin Fronteras, identified as Denis Omar Contreras (sometimes spelled “Contera” or “Contrera.”[16] A second Pueblo Sin Fronteras activist, Rodrigo Abeja, was later identified as “traveling with the migrants.”[17] Abeja was noted as being “one of the caravan’s leaders” in the Washington Post.[18] He was also a caravan leader in the April 2018 caravan.[19]

After President Donald Trump warned the governments of Honduras and Guatemala that they would be cut off from American foreign aid for failing to control the flow of illegal migrant caravans to the U.S., Pueblo Sin Fronteras accused the Central American countries of adopting “a policy of fear and racism imposed by the United States.”[20]

The caravan met with criticism from many American pro-legal immigration groups, which wrote that “bowing to this migration blackmail would produce an American political backlash that would damage the cause of legal immigration and a humane refugee policy.”[21] David Frum, a moderate Republican and writer for the Atlantic, noted that the caravan’s slogan was “People without borders,” adding that it “chimes with the rising sentiment among liberals that border-enforcement is inherently illegitimate, and usually racist, too.”[22]

Initial Denial of Pueblo Sin Fronteras Involvement

A number of center-left U.S. media outlets initially denied the role of Pueblo Sin Fronteras and other left-wing groups in organizing the caravan. On October 23, the Washington Post published a report which considered the caravan to have been created spontaneously by economic migrants.[23] Univision, a Spanish language television network, reported on November 15 that “there’s no organized effort to try to get these migrants from Honduras to the border, to the U.S.-Mexico border.” When asked about involvement by non-governmental agencies, Univision said, “In all our reporting since this caravan started — not only this one, the others that [preceded it] — we haven’t found any evidence of any government involved in funding or financing this effort to try to get these people Honduras to the U.S.-Mexico border. . . there’s no government or state force behind this.”[24] According to the New York Times on October 20: “Did Democrats, or George Soros, Fund Migrant Caravan? Despite Republican Claims, No”:[25]

The notion that refugees will leave their homes solely for a little cash is “crazy,” said Alex Mensing, a project coordinator with Pueblo Sin Fronteras, a transnational group that organized the migrant caravan that captured Mr. Trump’s attention last spring. (The group did not coordinate the caravan that is now traveling north, but has been organizing similar journeys for years.)

Pueblo Sin Fronteras activist Alex Mensing later claimed that “[t]here’s no one in charge of this thing [the caravan].”[26] At an October 19 protest in San Francisco, California, however, Mensing denounced efforts to control the flow of illegal immigrant caravans from Central America:[27]

“It’s time the Guatemalan government stand up for its Honduran brothers and sisters,” said Alex Mensing with the San Francisco-based organization Pueblo Sin Fronteras, a group that advocates for migrants’ human rights. “The people who are currently fleeing Honduras are being forcibly displaced from their country … and that is a direct result of the corrupt Honduran government and U.S. intervention and support for that corrupt government.”

In a November 26 radio interview with KPBS, Mensing also said that he was present on the Mexican side of the country’s northern border when caravan members attempted to forcibly cross into the United States.[28] On October 18, Pueblo Sin Fronteras activist Irineo Mujica, who holds dual American and Mexican citizenship, was arrested by Mexican officials during a pro-illegal immigration protest held in Ciudad Hidalgo, near the Mexico-Guatemala border.[29] While Pueblo Sin Fronteras activist Alex Mensing told reporters Mujica was not involved in organizing the October 2018 caravan, Mujica is listed as one of two Mexico-based contacts for a press release following the March 2018 Pueblo Sin Fronteras caravans.[30]

Evidence of a False Media Narrative Emerges

On November 13, American documentary filmmaker Ami Horowitz reported that the members of the caravan making its way through Oaxaco, Mexico, were approximately “90 to 95 percent” male, despite reporting in the U.S. that the caravan consisted of men and women, and were primarily organized by representatives from a group called Pueblo Sin Fronteras, which organized trucks of food, water, and other supplies to the migrants. Horowitz also interviewed caravan members, who said they were “seeking employment they illegally enter the United States,” and not fleeing gang violence in Honduras, as has also been widely reported by Western news outlets. [31] Horowitz told the right-leaning Daily Caller:[32]

What we do know is this thing [the caravan] cost millions and millions of dollars. . . . One of the lies the [mainstream] media is trying to propagate is the fact that all this weird organic thing and all the water and the food and medicine, all dropped [like]. . . manna from heaven. It’s bologna. It’s all highly organized. It’s paid for by a number of organizations, we don’t know exactly where the money is coming from.

According to Horowitz, the Pueblo Sin Fronteras he identified in Mexico is connected to, but not necessarily the same group as, the Chicago-based Pueblo Sin Fronteras. “We do know that Pueblo Sin Fronteras, which is the main group which has organized this caravan, has a couple of front organizations in the United States and the money is flowing from them to Pueblo Sin Fronteras [in Mexico].”[33] However, Emma Lozano has traveled to Mexico City before in her capacity as director of Centro Sin Fronteras in order “to support the Familia Latina Unida.”[34]

After the caravan reached Tijuana, Mexico in late November, MSNBC reporter Gadi Schwartz reported from the migrant caravan camp that women and children “are the minority of this caravan. Instead, most of the members of this caravan [are men],” he said, gesturing towards a line of “single men.” Schwartz also reported that many migrants had told him that they had joined the caravan after being falsely told that there were “work programs that they would be eligible for” in the United States. After realizing that there were no such programs and it wouldn’t be easy to cross into the U.S., Schwartz continued, “some of them are deciding to turn back” and return to Central America.[35]

Some center-left groups like the Washington Post initially criticized conservatives for claiming that members of the violent gang MS-13 were traveling with the migrant caravan. On October 25, Post fact-checker Salvador Rizzo criticized the Trump administration for provid[ing] no evidence that criminals, members of the MS-13 gang or people of Middle Eastern descent form[ed] part of the caravan.”[36]

On November 28, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency released a statement that it had arrested a “Honduran citizen and active gang member with the notorious Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS-13) international crime organization. The man also told agents he traveled to the United States border with a large group of people from Central America intending on filing for asylum in the United States.”[37] The agency also announced that it had arrested over 600 convicted criminals traveling with the migrant caravan, although it did not confirm the “backgrounds and identities of all caravan members which possess a national security and public safety risk.”[38]

Media Sources Confirm Pueblo Sin Fronteras’s Involvement

Despite its initial position that the October migrant caravan was not organized by an outside group, on November 19 the Washington Post confirmed that Pueblo Sin Fronteras was “helping [to] guide the caravan” through Mexico and across the U.S. border. The report came after approximately 6,000 caravan members reached the city of Tijuana along the U.S.-Mexico border. The report also stated that “between 8,500 and 10,500” migrants were traveling with the caravan.[39]

La Razón, a Mexican daily newspaper, also reported that a number of Mexican activists denounced Pueblo Sin Fronteras for “inciting members of the migrant caravan to generate violence on the northern border of Mexico.” Eunice Rendón, a Mexican immigration activist and coordinator for the group Migrant Agenda, reportedly met with Pueblo activist Rodrigo Abeja to offer the group “legal assistance.” Abeja declined because “he pursued other purposes.” Rendón told La Razón that, “In the end, it’s people [like Irineo Mujica] who have other interests and take advantage of the vulnerability of others. They bring political motivations.”[40]

According to Mexico News Daily and Milenio, around 350 migrants chose to leave the caravan once it reached Tijuana, Mexico in order to return to their Central American countries, claiming they were “misled about their chances of gaining entry to the U.S.:”[41][42]

“Pueblos Sin Fronteras [sic] told us not to worry, that there was going to be transportation, that Mexico was going to open the gates so that we didn’t have to enter [the U.S.] illegally, via the river . . .” Honduran migrant Ulises López said, referring to the attempted border breach Sunday.

“What was offered to the caravan of Honduran migrants was a trap . . . The people that brought us to this place, supposedly [caravan] leaders, took advantage of us, they used us in a horrific way, what they did to us has no name,” he added.

David Abud, a Pueblo Sin Fronteras representative, responded to the claim by denying all organizational involvement in the October caravan, saying: “Let it be clear that we didn’t organize or encourage [the migrants] to carry out the march [to the border].”[43] A report by right-leaning the Epoch Times, however, called Pueblo Sin Fronteras “a well-oiled asylum machine.” According to the report: [44]

The group [Pueblo Sin Fronteras] writes the names of asylum-seekers in its book—each number is assigned 10 names—and when a number is called, that’s the day those people enter the pedestrian crossing into the United States and claim asylum. They have recorded more than 11,000 names since March. U.S. Customs and Border Protection processes around 100 asylum claims per day at El Chaparral.

Colonel Fred Peterson, former chief public affairs officer of the U.S. Defense Department’s Joint Task Force North, which administers counter-drug and terrorist operations in North America, called the caravan “a very well-funded operation. It’s not spontaneous at all.” According to Peterson, the migrants were “just props in a political, staged play.” [45]

According to Kate Morrisey, a reporter with the San Diego Union Tribune, migrants traveling with the caravan confirmed Pueblo Sin Fronteras’s involvement in coordinating it: [46]

There are people who have performed leadership tasks at different points along the caravan’s journey, but they don’t want to be called leaders.

The caravan has a very flat structure — anyone who wants to be involved in decision-making is invited to the meetings that are coordinated by Pueblo Sin Fronteras, a group that has escorted migrant caravans through Mexico for years.

Luis Cruz, an organizer with Pueblo Sin Fronteras, told Fox News on December 3 that Pueblo was helping to organize the caravan in Tijuana. He also urged President Trump to “let these people in. Let them try. Let them try. I mean, most of these people are not bad.”[47]

Criticism from the Left

Pueblo Sin Fronteras has been criticized by left-leaning immigration proponents in the United States and Mexico. Alejandra Solalinde, a Mexican priest and immigration activist, alleged that Pueblo Sin Fronteras “impeded him from warning caravan members” against seeking asylum in the United States, which many of them would not qualify for. “Pueblo [Sin Fronteras] has no scruples,” Solalinde told the Mexican newspaper SinEmbargo.[48]

In a December 29, 2018 op-ed in the Hill, immigration expert and George Mason University professor Dr. Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera and former Obama administration U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Alan Bersin criticized the media narrative that the October 2018 caravan was created spontaneously, noting that the “migrants remain out in the cold mired in squalor with no chance of having their asylum petitions processed any time soon”: [49]

When [the migrants] arrived on foot in Mexico, however, migrant advocacy groups—particularly Pueblo Sin Fronteras—assumed an organizing role, arranged funding and managed the logistics to transport 10,000 migrants to the northern Mexican border city of Tijuana.

. . . it has become clear that the organizations which brought the caravan to Tijuana have brought no benefits to the migrants themselves. To the contrary, migrants have been exploited as political pawns and left helpless in an increasingly hostile Tijuana.

Open it up or we’ll shut it down! Everyone must be let in! MEXICANS and AMERICANS stand with us!

The arrival of the migrant caravan at the Mexico-US border has proven once again that the tactic of the caravan is our best strategy for safely reaching the US. Although we have not reached the border without suffering the roughness of the trip and some of us suffering it more than others, united we have almost reached our goal of crossing to the US and have
set the example for thousands of our brothers and sisters that are now making their way in their own caravans through Mexico, while others prepare for the next caravan to take off.

. . .

We live in a daily joint struggle to survive in the US undocumented and we march side by side fighting for immigrant rights. We invite our Mexican brothers and sisters to join our caravan efforts to safely and promptly cross to the US.

The BAMN document called for the Democratic Party to demand the caravan be allowed to illegally cross the U.S. border: “The US midterm elections are over, there’s no reason why civil rights organizations and the Democratic Party apparatus should not be fiercely demanding open access across the border for the caravan and doing everything possible to stop Trump’s racist attacks on the caravan.” BAMN also encouraged Americans in San Diego, California, “to solidarize [sic] with the caravan [and], if are legally able, to get across the border to Mexico and help the caravan to cross the finish line as quickly as possible.”[51]

Pueblo Sin Fronteras reportedly organized a rally in Oakland, California on November 25 “to show solidarity with the caravan of Central American families seeking asylum in the U.S.” According to the far-left website Workers’ World (Mundo Obrero), Honduran immigrant and Pueblo supporter Chris Lopez said: “We are here today in solidarity. We are here to support the rights of all migrants to seek asylum.”[52]

In January 2019, a benefit show for Pueblo Sin Fronteras was hosted by Free Lunch PDX, a Portland, Oregon-based food collective, to help raise funds for their work in assisting Central American migrants commit illegal border crossings. The event was promoted by far-left media organization, It’sGoingDown. [53]

Previous Illegal Migrant Caravan

April 2018 Caravan

In Spring 2018, hundreds of migrants from Central America approached the U.S.-Mexico border seeking asylum in the United States and threatening to enter illegally if their request was denied. Pueblo Sin Fronteras organized the caravan in conjunction with the CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project.[54][55] The CARA coalition consists of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, the American Immigration Council, the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association, all groups advocating for legal status for illegal immigrants and expanded immigration overall.[56] These organizations have been funded by a number of major left-of-center grantmaking foundations, including the Open Society Foundations, MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, and Carnegie Corporation of New York. [57] The caravan eventually halted in Mexico City on April 4 instead of reaching the United States border.[58] On November 27, CNN reported that the “annual caravan of Central American migrants heading to the U.S. border [was] organized by Pueblo Sin Fronteras,” referring to the April caravan. [59]

In a press release released by Pueblo Sin Fronteras on March 23, 2018, the group “demand[ed]” the governments of Mexico and the United States “open the[ir] borders to us because we are as much citizens as the people of the counties where we are and/or travel.” Other demands were “that deportations, which destroy families, come to an end” and “that the U.S. government not end TPS [Temporary Protected Status] for those who need it.” [60] Temporary Protected Status is a status designated by the Secretary of Homeland Security which grants eligible foreign nationals protected status during “extraordinary and temporary conditions.”[61] The demands appear to violate U.S. law, which prohibits behavior by individuals that “encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States” illegally.[62]

The press release was co-signed by Roberto Corona, the founder of Pueblo Sin Fronteras, and Alex Mensing, an organizer with the group.[63]

Pueblo Sin Fronteras has reportedly organized roughly 1,000 immigrants in caravans to attempt to enter the U.S. and Mexico illegally since 2010, primarily from Honduras and El Salvador:[64]

The idea behind an organized group journey is to alleviate some danger on the long trip, through the simple principle of safety in numbers. Pueblo Sin Fronteras has its own organizers to handle logistics, and each individual is responsible for their own provision of food, water, and funding for transportation, should it be necessary. Groups are created by Pueblo Sin Fronteras; each composed of about 15 individuals under one leader. Five groups are then organized into a sector. This is how the caravan is structured and maintains order as the group moves northward.

Leadership

Founder

While it’s unclear who founded Pueblo Sin Fronteras, many media sources have attributed it to Roberto Corona. Corona reportedly founded Pueblo Sin Fronteras in 2009 while organizing day laborers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. [65]

Executive Director

Emma Lozano is president and founder of the Centro Sin Fronteras, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit closely associated with Pueblo Sin Fronteras.[66] She is the sister of the late Rudy Lozano, a left-wing activist and community organizer in Chicago, Illinois.[67] Lozano is also a pastor at the Lincoln United Methodist Church in Chicago, along with her husband, the pastor Walter “Slim” Coleman. [68][69]

Lozano has stated her belief that, because Texas and other western states were territory of Mexico prior to their annexation to the United States in the 19th century, non-citizens from Mexico “have every right to be here [in the U.S.].”[70] In 2003, Lozano and Pueblo Sin Fronteras joined pro-illegal immigration organizers for the Immigrant Workers Freedom Rides in order to “push the State of Illinois to become an Immigrant Freedom Zone.” During a rally, she said: [71]

“We won’t give up until we have equal rights and live a life with dignity. Legalization is not enough – we want to make a new America, one that accepts and treats all of the inhabitants of our continent as equal citizens. We ride for freedom from our oppressors and we don’t say, ‘please, accept us, we are good workers,’ and make contributions, and wave the U.S. flag. We know our history – 1/2 of the entire United States was originally Mexico. We have every right to be here.”

“We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us, We’re not democrats or republicans [sic] – we’re Pueblo Sin Fronteras and were bringing the Virgin of Guadalupe to confront the so-called Statue of Liberty. We want justice now.”

Activists

Alex Mensing is an organizer and program coordinator for Pueblo Sin Fronteras and its affiliates. [72] Mensing has spent a significant amount of time with economic migrants in Central America and organizing illegal immigrant caravans to the United States.[73] According to a 2016 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Mensing was a staffer for the CARA Family Detention Project, a coalition of left-of-center organizations providing legal aid and representation to illegal immigrants in the United States.[74]

Irineo Mujica, an Arizona-based activist holding dual United States and Mexican citizenship, is a caravan organizer for Pueblo Sin Fronteras.[75] In October 2018, he was arrested by Mexican officials in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, for his involvement in a pro-illegal immigration protest.[76]

Rodrigo Abeja is an activist and organizer for Pueblo Sin Fronteras. He has been involved in at least two caravans from Central America to the U.S. and Mexico.[77][78] Abeja was identified in a 2013 article by the news group Vice as a representative for the Popular Assembly of Migrant Families, an left-wing organization based in Mexico which organizes migrants to the United States.[79]

Funding

Pueblo Sin Fronteras notes that it is “not a nonprofit organization” and that “donations [to it] will not be tax-deductible.” The group accepts donations via the payment sharing service Venmo, however. [80]

Pueblo Sin Fronteras is reportedly funded by Freedom for Immigrants, an Oakland, California-based immigration advocacy group. [81] In September 2018, Freedom for Immigrants raised $15,000 to pay for a bond releasing Valentina Mejia, a Salvadoran migrant and part of a 2017 caravan to the American border who was detained by U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement. [82]